I continued working on the rocker panel on the drivers side yesterday. It’s going pretty good. I’m trying to be patient about it, so I do a very good job, rather than what I want to do, and rush to get it done, so I can slap the motor in it and drive!

I bent up the rocker panel on Jeff’s sheetmetal brake last week, and now that I have started putting it in, I realize I have one of the bends, just slightly in the wrong spot. I’ll have to make a slit, in it to take out the extra material, then weld it back up… but it’s a good learning experience.

Here are some photos of the progress:

I started in on cutting out the rusty parts of the drivers front cab corner, and the driver’s floor today. It was kind of slow going, trying to get everything JUST how I wanted it before cutting… I braced up the cab so it wouldn’t twist horribly, and would keep the proper dimensions, first.

Then I jacked the cab up again, and changed where I was supporting it; instead of holding it up by the somewhat flimsy floor, which I was about to cut out, I propped it up by the cowl. It’s much better, because all of the weight is hanging from, rather than sitting on, a support.

Here are some photos of the first little tiny patch panels going in. I thought I’d be able to rip right into putting the rocker into place, but it turned out that I needed to do some little patches first to be certain that I wouldn’t have trouble with the new patches having support, or things rusting out prematurely.

Thank GOD for the autodarkening helmet. My welds are not perfect, but they are so much smaller than they were before I got one, that is saved me probably about 15 minutes of grinding!

I finished taking the box off of the truck, and did some minor clean up on the bits and pieces left behind. It went alot smoother on the passenger side, than the first side went!

I got the gas tank taken out, ish, old gas smells BAD! Then I jacked up the drivers side of the cab, and started trying to get the door gap good. Once I got it close, I compared the measurement on the drivers and passengers side, and here’s where the “sort of” comes in… it’s about 1/2″ longer on the passenger side. Weird. Then I started looking at the door gaps… the front of the drivers door has almost no gap, but the back looks good. The passenger side front is a little tight, but looks pretty good, as does the passenger side rear door gap.

So, what’s the story? I’m not a bodyman… I’m hoping that someone on either the MNRatrods, or HAMB boards can help me out with a measurement. Maybe the passenger side has moved, but just looks pretty good? Any thoughts? Take a look at the photos, and you’ll see what I mean.

This has been a fun week at home, and terrible at work! I fought with some server problems all week, and put in about 60 hours. Yuck. However, I got home from work on Tuesday, and my drivers cowl patch had arrived, then today, both the new (to me) small block chevy and Turbo 350 trans were delivered, and the big brown truck showed up packing my rear cab corner patches! Sweet!! I’m pretty excited to get started on all of this, first up is covering up the new engine, plugging it’s holes, etc. then I’ll start cutting the floor out of the truck.

Oh, also, I stopped up to a buddy’s place and used his sheetmetal brake to bend up some rocker panel patches… mmmm, it’ll be sweet when the rust is gone!

Well, I bought a Hobart XTV welding helmet this past Sunday… it’s sweet. I did some welding on Chad’s race trailer last night, which was the most welding I’ve done with it… it rocks.

I also got a bit of work done on the truck in the last couple days. Nothing to write home about, but I got one of the bed-sides off, and started on the other. I also ordered up a bunch of patch panels for the cab, so that’ll be cool.

I haven’t been getting too much done on the truck the past few days. I’ve had other things going on, and we’ve been having trouble at work, so I haven’t been getting to sleep very much. Anyhow, I finally decided to get an autodarkening welding helmet on Sunday, and bought a Hobart XVT model. It’s really nice, and it was relatively inexpensive! I played with it a bit on Sunday evening… it’s going to help me be a better welder, and quick!